The Tea Time project in Vaasa is making it easier for foreigners and locals to meet each other. vaasabladet

We meet at the home of Anas Ashfaq, who is the founder of the project, with Philip Kimuya who is from Kenya and Lena Johansson who is from Oravais. We were served tea which was prepared the Kenyan way.

– Even though the name of the project is Tea Time you can serve whatever you wish, we just thought that the name was better than Coffee Time, Ashfaq said laughingly.

The mood was easy and when we later on were joined by Marko Koski and his son Ewan discussions turned to tea, Swahili and Tanzania.

The project was founded by Ashfaq who is studying IT in Vaasa. He said that he got the idea from a similar project in Norway.

-I saw a Norwegian video of a similar thing and I thought that it was a great idea, he said.

The idea behind Tea Time is to give foreigners and locals a chance to meet. A lot of foreigners prefer to spend time with each other, but Finns often prefer to stay within their comfort zone.

– I have a lot of foreign and Finnish friends that do not really have a chance to meet each other even if the willingness to do so is there, Ashfaq says.

Tea Time is designed so that anyone can register themselves either as a host or a guest on the website by filling in a questionnaire. The questionnaire asks for contact information and interests and hobbies.

– We skipped the question about being in a relationship since we wanted to make it clear that this is not a dating website, Ashfaq says.

When you have registered yourself someone on the website will contact you. The guests and hosts are paired up and then we will come up with a time for the meeting that will work for everyone.

Koski and Johansson both think that this project is a good initiative. They both heard of the project from their friends, and will register themselves and continue to be active within the project in the future.

– I have many friends who would have wanted to be here today but did not have time. I will definitely ask them to register themselves, says Johansson